


Rocket's senses and general notes

by Woozletania



Series: Rocket headcanons [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 03:15:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12423915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woozletania/pseuds/Woozletania
Summary: Some thoughts about Rocket's senses as they are portrayed in my work.  Some of this is supported by the movies and some is just how he is when I write him.





	Rocket's senses and general notes

Taste: Rocket's sense of taste is quite poor by human standards. This helps him in his habit of being extremely omnivorous. In the bad old days he sometimes ate spoiled food from trash cans and even today he's not shy about catching and eating bugs and small animals. This is both for instinctual reasons (small moving things are probably food as far as a raccoon is concerned) and due to him nearly starving after escaping from the labs where he was created. Beggars can't be choosers and it was eat whatever was available or starve. As a result it takes some mighty bad cooking before Rocket will complain. Rocket does not like to waste food and will eat everything that is available, leading to the Guardians joking that he eats more than Drax. (He doesn't). Luckily his creators built in a metabolic “switch” that keeps his weight from increasing too much or he'd get quite fat from the relatively good fare on board the Milano. (Good by the standards of someone who used to live on garbage and rats, anyway).

Smell: A typical raccoon has a much better sense of smell than a human and Rocket's sense of smell is better than that. This was a modification made by his creators so their experimental supersoldier technology testbed (that is, Rocket) could identify food safe to eat and track down enemies. His excellent sense of smell largely makes up for his rather poor sense of taste and if there's anything he is reluctant to eat, it's extremely spicy food whose odor burns his nose. He has the habit of first sniffing for danger, then looking, in addition to sniffing at strangers so he will know they are there later even if he can't see them.

Sight: Raccoons are habitually crepuscular (active at twilight) and lack good color vision. But this, too, was augmented by his creators and his sight is superhumanly acute, especially at close range. (Useful when tinkering). Within about ten feet (3 meters) he can make out the most minuscule details in anything he can see, which among other things allows him to cheat at cards very effectively simply by looking for tiny imperfections in the card backs that nearly anyone else would miss. Rocket's eyes possess a tapetum lucidum, the reflective layer that improves night vision in many animals by bouncing the light back through the retina after it is sensed once by his optic nerves. This also means that if you shine a light on him at night you get “eyeshine”, as with a cat.

Hearing: Superior to a human's, but not as good as a dog's. He can sense auditory frequencies both above and below those audible to humans. It's not an especially useful ability but it does send him looking for problems with the machinery on board the Milano because it “sounds wrong”, at least to him.

Touch: Here we get to Rocket's truly superhuman sense. Little modification was needed to upgrade his sense of touch. Fine hairs above his claws sense objects even before he touches them and his awesomely sensitive and strong hands, along with the intuitive technical sense his creators imbued in him, allows him to take apart, modify and reassemble devices quickly and accurately, even blindfolded. He is also an expert at lockpicking. Rocket is rarely able to explain how he does what he does: he simply knows how to do things with his hands. In that little skull lies an implanted, genuinely superhuman technical skill, and if anyone besides the Guardians would accept him and give him the least respect he could make a very good living modifying weapons and gear. This was of course done to make him a better soldier, but the doctors at Halfworld captured lighting in a bottle and ended up with something far more than they expected. They would perhaps have been proud of their creation had he not gotten loose and killed most of them on his way to freedom. 

If his insanely acute sense of touch wasn't enough, it becomes even more acute when his hands are wet. Like a normal raccoon his hands are covered in a tough leathery hide and when soaked they become still more sensitive and flexible. When working on extraordinarily delicate tasks he will keep a bowl of water to dip his fingers in or, when also exposed to hazardous shocks, he will wear watertight gloves with a bit of the fluid inside to keep his hands extra sensitive.

Balance: Rocket is equally comfortable on two legs or all fours and has a superhumanly acute sense of positional relationships. This is mostly seen in his ability to shoot very accurately without looking down the sights. It also aids his programmed-in piloting ability, as he can sense the ship's movements very accurately even through the artificial gravity. In a fighter-sized ship Rocket can do the most extraordinary maneuvers, up to and including aerial “circle strafing” or drifting his craft to circle the target while keeping the forward guns trained on it. Much of this is instinctive (or rather programmed-in) as his technical expertise and he would have difficulty explaining how he does it. 

General metabolism: His cybernetic implants make him approximately five times as strong as a normal raccoon, or easily as strong as the average adult human. His slight weight (usually around forty pounds or 18 kilos) means that despite his considerable strength he can be manhandled by a skilled fighter, but he can beat a man senseless if given the least opportunity and isn't shy about biting or clawing. His implant-reenforced bones also make him resistant to falling damage and impacts, but he is hardly invulnerable. His implants are metabolically powered and as a result he needs about twice as many calories in food as a normal creature his size.

Rocket's little raccoon brain has a number of computational implants that make him far more intelligent than any common animal. The majority of the implants are there to provide his nearly magical technical, piloting and marksmanship abilities. As what amounts to a furry tech demonstrator who was slated to be euthanized when the experiments were done language and social skills were anything but a priority so he comes across as crass, easily angered and uninterested in the niceties of language, but underestimating his intellect is a very bad idea. The last two people who thought he wasn't worth worrying about were Ronan and Ego and they paid for that mistake.

Rocket's pelt varies in thickness with the season and even on a climate controlled ship he sheds twice a year. In his summer coat he appears noticeably thinner and in winter coat much fluffier, and despite the metabolic “switch” he always puts on several pounds of winter weight as fall approaches. While the other Guardians certainly don't complain about a cuter, fluffier Rocket (especially since he sometimes lets them pet him now), there is always a bit of grousing about the “hair everywhere”.


End file.
